The pessimist waits for better times, and expects to keep on waiting; the optimist goes to work with the best that is at hand now, and proceeds to create better times.

Believe in yourself and all that you are. Know that there is something inside you that is greater than any obstacle.

Forget the mistakes of the past and press on to the greater achievements of the future.

Our destiny is not mapped out for us by some exterior power; we map it out for ourselves. What we think and do in the present determines what shall happen to us in the future.

The more grateful you are for everything good that comes into your life, the more closely you place your mind in contact with that power in life that can produce greater good.

When your thinking is brilliant, you will be brilliant, but if your thinking is not brilliant you will not be brilliant, no matter how brilliant you may think you are.

The secret of the master mind is found wholly in the use of imagination.

Be just as enthusiastic about the success of others as you are about your own.

The master mind is the mind that thinks what it wants to think, regardless of what circumstances, environment or associations may suggest.

What we love in others we not only awaken in others, but we develop those very things more or less in ourselves.

The true purpose of the strong is to promote greater strength in the weak, and not to keep the weak in that state where they are at the mercy of the strong.

Reclaiming the sacred in our lives naturally brings us close once more to the wellsprings of poetry.

In the end you’ll see you won’t stop me.

There is a myth that those who do humanitarian work have a saviour mentality, but the relationship is reciprocal.

You must not for one instant give up the effort to build new lives for yourselves. Creativity means to push open the heavy, groaning doorway to life.

I wanted to get paid to sharpen pencils originally just because I thought it would be fun.

Writers should avoid the academy. When a writer begins to accept pay for talking about words, we know what he will produce soon: nothing but words.

I gave them a fair warning

It's good to kind of get away from the star treatment.

It was like being in the eye of a hurricane. You'd wake up in a concert and think, Wow, how did I get here?

I have fallen in love with American names, the sharp, gaunt names that never get fat.